tie relation the intellectual and social culture of Americans, has to America — outside of 

 the pale of politics. Our belle-letters, our reviews, our fashions, our very thoughts on 

 most matters that relate to society and manners, are essentially and avowedly foreign. 

 " The glass of fashion and the mould of form," to us comes in the shape of a milliner's 

 band-box from Paris, or the conversation of the fictitious lords and ladies of the last po- 

 pular novel from England. Unfortunately, too, the tone of our society in the rural di.s- 

 tricts, is only a bad copy of that in our cities, and it may be safely said, that the only 

 thing in America which has little or nothing in common with the new world, is the social 

 culture of a large part of the intelligent, independent classes. Foreign literature, foreign 

 affectations, foreign ideas badly naturalised, in our republic, instead of a high ideal of the 

 true gentleman and republican of the new world — more independent than kings, far more 

 simple than men bred in courts, with too much intelligence to be coarse or vulgar; too 

 much consciousness of the full enjoyment of his natural rights, to feel any unworthy infe- 

 riority, and too much respect for the rights of others, and the value of human nature, ever 

 to be unjust to others. This is the social development to which we ought to grow — this 

 the model of a republican gentleman, which ought to be held up to the eyes of our j'outh. 

 Franklin, a man who is only, or for the most part, remembered as a man of science, was 

 ever remarkable as a tj^pe of the true gentleman of our Republic. Taken from the print- 

 ing office, and placed in the midst of the brilliant court of Versailles, or in the cabinet 

 councils of English peers, he always made men feel that there, their rank and fashion were 

 onlj"- luxuries, and that he was, in his simple frankness and courteous dignitj^, the intrinsic, 

 natural gentleman. 



Whether in the.se later da3's of our Eepublic, we have as clear instincts on such sub- 

 jects, — whether in the highest aims of our own social life, both in town and country, there is 

 not more of the false glitter, and less of the true gold, than in Franklin's day, we leave 

 our readers to judge. Certain it is, that nothing contributes so much to denationalise us, 

 as the growing habit of our more refined and cultivated minds, of looking whollj'' to the 

 old world for that social refinement and elevation, which, to be genuine, should spring 

 from the institutions of the new. 



Alice Carey's Clovernook, is a series of sketches of rustic life in Ohio and the "West, 

 so genuinely drawn that the farmers' families, the country clergyman, the deacon, the 

 school-master, and the whole dramatis personse of the countr}', with the mingled prose 

 and romance of their lives, rise as vividly before us as the old familiar mill, whose rum- 

 ble, and strange mixture of wheels and pinion, made the mystery of our childhood 

 With a quiet power, she makes the commonest events of a country life interesting, and 

 touches the landscape that forms the background or foreground to her figures, that makes 

 you marvel why our poets are so dull. The following extract, taken almost at random, 

 will serve, perhaps as well as any other, to show the power and grace of Miss Carey's 

 mind. 



"It has always seemed to me one of the most beautiful provisions of Providence, that 

 circumstances, however averse we be to them at first, close about us presently like waves, 

 and we would hardly unwind ourselves from their foldings, and standing out alone, say, 

 let it be thus or thus, if it were Dossible. When the morning comes through her white 

 gates, lifting her eyes smilingly on us, as she trails her crimson robes through the dew, 

 we would fain have it morning all the day. But when noon, holding in leash the shadows, 

 goes lazily winking along the hill tops, and the arms of labor rest a little from their work, 

 the fountan bubbles, or the well lies cool, it seems a good season, and we 

 back the din that must shortly ruffle its placid repose. And when the phantoms 



